


More mini-ficlets

by romans



Category: American Gods, Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Revenge - Fandom, Supernatural, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-12
Updated: 2012-06-12
Packaged: 2017-11-07 13:32:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/431723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romans/pseuds/romans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of  ficlets. Narnia, Supernatural/Revenge, Avengers and American Gods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Throw your soul through every open door

Amanda Clarke sells her soul when she's eight years old. She sells it to a smirking twelve-year-old girl who sits down beside her in the cafeteria one day and asks her what she wants most in the world. Amanda had seen her moving around the cafeteria all week, sitting at table after table, talking quietly to one girl and then another. She left them shaken, or smiling, or withdrawn and pale, but no matter what happened she always seemed satisfied. 

Amanda has long given up on ever seeing her father again. So she asks for her second best: "I want justice," she says, and the smirking girl smiles a little more widely. 

"Only justice?" she says. "I think you want more than that. Think bigger!"

"Revenge," Amanda says. _Revenge_ is a good word. She wants to break up someone's world. She doesn't know who, yet, but when she finds out who set up her father (it _has_ to be a set up, it has to be-) she wants to make them suffer as much as she has. 

"That's better," the girl says. "Want to make a deal?"

Ten years is a long time when you're almost eight.

*

Two weeks before she's released from Alanwood, Amanda starts to hear ghostly hounds. 

Two nights before she's due to leave, she wakes up from a nightmare to find Ems standing over her bunk. 

"Ems?" she says, and then Emily's head snaps back and the world fills with black smoke. Amanda doesn't even get a chance to scream. 

*

The man waiting outside by the car isn't a man, Emily can see that right away. He's a demon, a very old one, and a friend. He smiles at her and gives her a box, a billion dollars, a partner in crime. Poor Nolan Ross had sold his soul for NolCorp, and anything human about him had burned away aeons ago. He was an empty husk, now. A plaything for the demon who had made the deal. 

And god, did he need a haircut. 

*

At first she had been tempted to go the old fashioned way and gut every last human involved in the set-up, or maybe just every human in the zip code, but Nolan had talked her into playing the long game. 

She has a license to kill, but first she's going to ruin lives. She'll break a few hearts, make a few deals, inspire a few murders. She's going to tear the entire rotten town apart, from the inside out. What sort of idiot gave a duke of hell permission to wreak vengeance, just like that? 

Amanda had asked for revenge. Emily plans to give it to her, in spades.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This bunny has been bugging me for weeks now, and I still want to write more about Nolan and Emily being crossroads demons who are just fucking with everyone around them. Which wouldn't be that far off the real show, actually.


	2. American Gods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And these roads have their own gods. Deified by the press, eulogized in songs and poems, blood-drenched and young and road-bound by their deaths and by their names, two gods roam the back-roads and the highways, the dirt tracks and the winding mountain passes.

**Prompt: American Gods- Bonnie & Clyde**

 

America's roads are more than just grit and gravel, steaming asphalt and blowing dust. They're a web knitting the vast sprawl together, a symbol of hope and prosperity and home. They have meanings; _Go west_ is an American mantra, a prayer and a promise made by a thousand trampling masses. They have stories: the Trail of Tears is crumbling into nothing on the ground, but it will be a fixed line in the American consciousness forever. There are no American stories that do not begin or end with roads. The Old Gods were carried down them in covered wagons, in chains, in the songs and stories of displaced people. New temples were built and old ones burned down along the Oregon trail. Trees in the deserts become American shrines, adorned with offerings (the dusty shoes of passing travelers, caked with mud and dirt from across the land).

And these roads have their own gods. Deified by the press, eulogized in songs and poems, blood-drenched and young and road-bound by their deaths and by their names, two gods roam the back-roads and the highways, the dirt tracks and the winding mountain passes. They are called Bonnie and Clyde, or the Donner Party, or Sal and Dean; they are in every college road trip and every long-haul adventure. They are blizzards on a mountain top and dust swirling across the Plains. They are every engine that backfires, every broken-down gas station and grizzled diner on the edge of an American road. They inspire madness -a deserted water park in Death Valley, a speeding Porsche Spyder in Salinas- (Low-Key Liesmith tips his hat when he goes by) and snatch souls out of crumpled cars.

They are New Gods, but they sit at the beating heart of America. They are carved into her flesh. They will not die.


	3. longer ways to go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He lands in the middle of Utah, scattering cattle across the desert, and rips the thread from his lips savagely, uncaring of the damage to his face. He has nothing to say, now that he can open his mouth, but it hardly matters. He'll rip this world to shreds. He doesn't need sweet words to do that.

**Prompt: loki as a drifter / hobo - everything else is entirely up to you**

 

He lands in the middle of Utah, scattering cattle across the desert, and rips the thread from his lips savagely, uncaring of the damage to his face. He has nothing to say, now that he can open his mouth, but it hardly matters. He'll rip this world to shreds. He doesn't need sweet words to do that.

The man who picks him up is a farmer, driving out to work before sunrise. He doesn't want a hitchhiker, doesn't trust strangers, but Loki gives his mind a little push and takes away his choice in the matter. The farmer watches him out of the corner of his eye, curious but not talkative. He sees a drifter, a man in a suit that was once fine but is now wearing around the edges. He sees a whole face, red lips, green eyes, pale skin. Underneath the glamour, blood pours down Loki's chin and spatters onto his clothes, staining them a deep red. He gives the farmer a reassuring smile, knows that the man will never see the red of Loki's teeth.

The farmer drops him off in Cedar City, in the parking bay of a half-empty gas station. Loki wrinkles his nose at the acrid stench seeping into the air, and then locks himself into the dingy gas-station bathroom to assess the damage.

The mirror is cheap and dented, little more than a polished piece of metal nailed to the wall. His face is paler than usual, his eyes darkened with bruises that are more blue than black. His mouth is a bloody mess. He probes the mangled flesh, watching in fascination as blood gushes from the cuts in his lips. It really should have healed by now, he thinks, but perhaps it's a side effect of being on Midgard.

Loki cleans his face with thin paper towels and water from the sink, and magics away the blood staining his clothes. They'll be ruined again in less than an hour, if his lips don't stop bleeding. No matter. He runs a bloody hand through his hair, slicking it back off of his face, and watches in the mirror as a suit materializes on his body. He wraps a scarf around his neck, wipes the blood off of his chin, and steps out into the rain.

He has a world to destroy.


	4. again it seems we meet in the spaces in between

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He watches her apply her makeup by the flickering light of a candle, turning his wine glass in his fingers. The wine is still a luxury, but for his last night of leave it's the least she can do. The room is cheap and tawdry, with no electricity and a sagging bed, but it's private.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Peter-in-the-army owes a great debt to bedlamsbard, among others.

He watches her apply her makeup by the flickering light of a candle, turning his wine glass in his fingers. The wine is still a luxury, but for his last night of leave it's the least she can do. The room is cheap and tawdry, with no electricity and a sagging bed, but it's private.

"Would you really have married Rabadash?" he asks, suddenly. It is almost plaintive. Accusatory.

"No," she says, forgetting herself. She turns to look at him, her fingers smeared with grease and powder, and says "I - I got carried away."

"I thought- it doesn't matter," Peter says. His face is unreadable in the dim light.

"And why are you asking _now_?" Susan says irritably, turning back to her mirror. She pins her hair back with rough, careless movements, and winces when her scalp stings.

Her brother is silent for a long moment.

"When we were in Narnia I always expected you to leave me," he says.

Susan sighs, and purses her lips. She feels naked without lipstick, here in London.

"Oh, _Peter_ ," Susan says, turning away from her mirror again. "You're an idiot sometimes." She looks at him fondly. "Of course I love you. I always will. And besides, we were never- it was only pretend, Peter, you must remember that."

He pushes himself off of the bed and pulls his coat off the back of her chair.

"I have a gift for you," he says, rummaging through the pockets. He eventually comes up with a boxy little package.

"I'll always be there for you," Peter murmurs, setting the package on the table. He presses a kiss to Susan's neck, trails a hand along her shoulder, and leaves the room.

Inside of the package is a new pair of stockings and a tube of red lipstick.

Susan fights back a sudden rush of tears. She is, after all, a Queen. And a Queen must always keep her dignity.


	5. Carrying over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Um. Pevensies-as-assassins AU snippet. IDEK.

Lucy has her little drops, a different poison for every drink, and Susan has her AW sniper rifle and a perfectly steady trigger finger. Peter is proficient with most weapons but he prefers blunt force and sharp knives to anything else. Edmund carries a gun, but prefers to work the business side of things. His connections with the criminal underworld are truly impressive and probably make him more dangerous than his three siblings put together.

It's Peter's fondness for hands-on methods that has them waiting outside of the jail in a cramped car. The heat is turned all the way up to combat the vicious cold of the morning air that's drifting in through Susan's open window. She flicks the butt of her cigarette onto the ground, and lights up another one, mainly to feel the heat that flares up from the lighter, almost scorching the tips of her fingers.

Edmund makes an irritated noise, and she smiles around her cigarette, her lips bright with red lipstick.

Peter's out, she thinks, and her stomach twists with nervous, giddy anticipation.

She wonders if it's changed him.


End file.
